A lot of web hosting services tend to spend much more on their marketing budgets than they do on supporting their customers needs and requirements. With the creativity of such marketing, it is often very hard for a customer to assess a web host as critically as they ordinarily should. Other than the well-packaged sales pitches offered, web hosting companies have also come up with other creative ways to ensure that you ask less questions about the important issues and focus more on whipping out your credit card and clicking that all-important order button before their “30% off” “limited offer only” deals pass you by.

Discounts and incentives are great but to find truly reliable web hosting you have to look way beyond exciting freebies and focus on the fundamentals of a good web hosting provider. Take a look at their website and look for concrete explanations as to what they really offer you as a customer. A web host that tells you “We’ve Been Rated #1 in the Web Hosting Business” isn’t telling you anything useful, how exactly does that statement solve your problem? how does it help with your needs? You need details. What features come with the various packages that they offer ? What hosting platforms are they running and what services do they provide that satisfy your hosting requirements? You need to see detailed information concerning what they provide for each dollar you spend. Look less at their cool website design and focus more about what they have to offer.

You should also find out how long has your potential web host been in business as well as the experience and qualifications their employees have in terms of management of different kinds of hosting infrastructure. It’s not as if new web hosts out there are no good but when it comes to hosting, there’s no substitute for real hands-on experience. Technologies change and evolve and you want to ensure that your web host has personnel that are well-informed about current technologies and understand how to leverage such technologies to your advantage.These personnel also need a great deal of experience in order to be able to provide technical assistance when critical situations occur.

On much simpler levels, firing off an e-mail from the address listed on their contact page or calling their support line is also a good way to see how they respond to the needs of their clients. Reliable web hosts will always ensure that communication channels with their customers are always kept open, quick to respond and fully serviced in order to deal with problems and inquiries as they occur.

A reliable web host should also be able to deal with both the complex and simple requirements of customers. From the customer that knows little about computers and just needs a simple website hosted, to the geek that wants to know what .NET frameworks are available on their Windows web hosting platforms. Other than being technologically able, a reliable web host must also have customer friendly support staff that will take the required time to offer explanations and solutions to clients when they need them.

Finding a reliable web host isn’t rocket science, you just have to understand how to look out for the fundamentals of good service and focus less on sales pitches. However great a web host’s marketing strategy is, assessing that service based on these points always makes it easy to separate the good from the bad and to properly determine how reliable that web host is.

By
Mike Dias
http://www.m6.net/

What Is Dedicated Web Hosting

What is a dedicated web hosting server? As the name explains, it is a server that can host your website alone. A dedicated server is the ultimate choice in web hosting for a growing business.

Moving From Shared Web Hosting

When your online business began, you may have used a shared server for web hosting. A shared web hosting server is more sensible when starting a business because the costs are substantially less. It is an ideal way to start your business on the internet. If you are finding that your customers are having difficulty accessing your website and you need more web hosting space, it is time for a dedicated web hosting server.

Web Hosting Space

Although a dedicated web hosting server costs more to maintain, it may end up being more cost efficient when it comes to looking at the added benefits. More web hosting space allows you to expand your business online by adding an e-commerce facility or any one of a number of possibilities.

eCommerce Web Hosting

Many businesses that advertise their product on the internet find it useful to have a database, such as an e-commerce facility, as part of their web hosting package. This allows a customer to browse your site, leave the website for a while and then return and the items remain in their basket. Studies have shown that a customer who returns to the website will often change their mind about buying things unless they are still in their basket.

Web Hosting Bandwidth

In addition to the added web hosting space, you can also get more bandwidth when you have a dedicated web hosting server. Bandwidth is what allows the web hosting server to direct customers to your website. When sharing bandwidth with other websites, you can risk losing customers as they will not be able to access the clogged web hosting server to your website.

Depending upon the type of service, bandwidth and web hosting space you are looking for on your new web hosting server, you will find a number of web hosting solutions available.

     When you make the decision to create your own website, there are a couple of things you need to consider. You need to consider who is going to create your website, an employee, an outside company, your neighbors kid? Obviously you want to pick someone who knows what they are doing and will be able to support you and update your web site months from now with new information. Private contractors and companies will do a basic web site pretty cheap if you don’t want any of the bells and whistles. The other big question you need to ask yourself is, where am I going to store my web site. Most people don’t think about the fact that they need to store their web site but you do. Your web site has to be stored on a server somewhere that is accessible from the Internet and has all of the proper security features in place.

     There are tons of different web hosting companies out there that will create you a domain name (www.yourbusiness.com) and store your website for a very low fee. If you happen to out grow your web hosting company is can be a pain to move your web site to another hosting company so make sure you plan ahead early to avoid unnecessary costs. There are a few things you want to look for when picking your web hosting company.

Storage Space is the first thing you want to look at when you are selecting a web hosting company. Storage space is the amount of room that the company gives you to store your web site. When looking at storage space you want to have at least 10 Gigs or 10000 Mbs (these are the same amount). By having this much storage space you can build a basic web site and have plenty of room to grow with your web site. If you later want to include downloads, or image galleries you are going to need this extra space for storage.

Monthly Traffic is the amount in size that people viewing your web site are allowed to download. Whenever your web site is viewed everything is downloaded to the users computer and the amount they download is part of your Monthly Traffic. This number comes into play when you begin to get a lot of traffic to your web site. As your traffic increases most web hosting companies will require you to upgrade to an account with a higher Monthly Traffic number. A good number to monthly traffic is anywhere from 200Gb to 300Gb for your basic site and obviously that number only increases as you receive more traffic.

Databases are being used more and more in the web design business as companies are getting more high tech and want their information to be database driven. This may not be something you want to do right now but should you ever need it you want to make sure you have it ahead of time. Databases for most hosting companies is a very small fee ahead of time to have it setup.

Service Uptime Guarantee is the percentage of time that the web hosting company guarantees that they will be up and running. You don’t want to choose any provider that has less than a 99.9% uptime. This means that your site is guaranteed to be up 99.9% of the time.

Backups are very important when it comes to web sites and your hosting company should feel the same way. You want to make sure that your hosting company are doing daily backups of all of your web site data. You also want to make sure that they are running UPS backup (uninterrupted power supply) and diesel generators. Hosting companies that have these in place are ahead of the game because your data is safely stored and even in the event of prolonged power outages at the hosting company your can still function on the backup generators.

Easy Upgrading is another important feature you want in a web hosting company. Should you plan ahead effectively and you still out grow the current plan you have with your web hosting company you want to make sure you can easily upgrade without any hassle or lose of data. If you choose a web hosting company that makes it easy to upgrade you will save yourself a lot of headaches down the road.

     Web hosting is a very inexpensive option to get your business on the Internet if you choose the right web hosting company. Just remember to plan ahead for future expansion of your web site and you will reap the benefits of cheap on-line advertising with your new web site.

When you make the decision to create your own website, there are a couple of things you need to consider. You need to consider who is going to create your website, an employee, an outside company, your neighbors kid? Obviously you want to pick someone who knows what they are doing and will be able to support you and update your web site months from now with new information. Private contractors and companies will do a basic web site pretty cheap if you don’t want any of the bells and whistles. The other big question you need to ask yourself is, where am I going to store my web site. Most people don’t think about the fact that they need to store their web site but you do. Your web site has to be stored on a server somewhere that is accessible from the Internet and has all of the proper security features in place.

There are tons of different web hosting companies out there that will create you a domain name (www.yourbusiness.com) and store your website for a very low fee. If you happen to out grow your web hosting company is can be a pain to move your web site to another hosting company so make sure you plan ahead early to avoid unnecessary costs. There are a few things you want to look for when picking your web hosting company.

Storage Space is the first thing you want to look at when you are selecting a web hosting company. Storage space is the amount of room that the company gives you to store your web site. When looking at storage space you want to have at least 10 Gigs or 10000 Mbs (these are the same amount). By having this much storage space you can build a basic web site and have plenty of room to grow with your web site. If you later want to include downloads, or image galleries you are going to need this extra space for storage.

Monthly Traffic is the amount in size that people viewing your web site are allowed to download. Whenever your web site is viewed everything is downloaded to the users computer and the amount they download is part of your Monthly Traffic. This number comes into play when you begin to get a lot of traffic to your web site. As your traffic increases most web hosting companies will require you to upgrade to an account with a higher Monthly Traffic number. A good number to monthly traffic is anywhere from 200Gb to 300Gb for your basic site and obviously that number only increases as you receive more traffic.

Databases are being used more and more in the web design business as companies are getting more high tech and want their information to be database driven. This may not be something you want to do right now but should you ever need it you want to make sure you have it ahead of time. Databases for most hosting companies is a very small fee ahead of time to have it setup.

Service Uptime Guarantee is the percentage of time that the web hosting company guarantees that they will be up and running. You don’t want to choose any provider that has less than a 99.9% uptime. This means that your site is guaranteed to be up 99.9% of the time.

Backups are very important when it comes to web sites and your hosting company should feel the same way. You want to make sure that your hosting company are doing daily backups of all of your web site data. You also want to make sure that they are running UPS backup (uninterrupted power supply) and diesel generators. Hosting companies that have these in place are ahead of the game because your data is safely stored and even in the event of prolonged power outages at the hosting company your can still function on the backup generators.

Easy Upgrading is another important feature you want in a web hosting company. Should you plan ahead effectively and you still out grow the current plan you have with your web hosting company you want to make sure you can easily upgrade without any hassle or lose of data. If you choose a web hosting company that makes it easy to upgrade you will save yourself a lot of headaches down the road.

Web hosting is a very inexpensive option to get your business on the Internet if you choose the right web hosting company. Just remember to plan ahead for future expansion of your web site and you will reap the benefits of cheap on-line advertising with your new web site.

Before, only a few people are able to get their sites on the World Wide Web because web hosting providers used to charge a lot for their services. Nowadays, there are cheaper options even for the small and medium sized businesspersons.

Going for a cheap web host does not necessarily mean that you are compromising quality. In fact, there do exist quite a lot of good quality web hosts that are within your means. You only have to know what to look out for and where.

There are some basic things that you need to keep in mind when searching for a good and cheap web hosting service provider. One of the primary considerations is reliability. A web host’s reliability can be measured by the availability of a good support system. Some web hosts provide not just a landline, but also a live support and other means of communication. This way, a customer needing immediate help can be catered to at the soonest possible time.

Another thing that you must look out for is uptime. Is your web host able to guarantee an uptime of not less than 99%? A high uptime percentage is essential as this only means that your website is up and running on the World Wide Web at least 99% of the time. Just imagine your potential loss if a customer clicks on the link to your site and your site does not upload at all!

Affordable web hosting providers may cost as little as $1.00 a month, but some could cost a little more. The range, though, usually never exceeds $10.00. Then again, the price is often determined by several factors, among them, space and bandwidth. It is important therefore that you know how much of these your website requires so you can select the appropriate hosting package to purchase.

Now, that you know the factors that make up a good web host, find out now where you can find cheap web hosting on the World Wide Web. One of the best sources of free information is a review site, specifically a third party review site dealing with web hosting service providers. There are quite a number of these existing on the web, so it may work to your advantage to visit each one and see which among the web hosting companies are consistently on the top of the site’s rankings.

Joining forums, too, can help you make an informed decision concerning web hosting companies. These forums are participated in by techno experts and professionals, webmasters, web hosts, and clients; thus, these forums provide a good ground for discussion of web hosting and related topics.

Alternatively, search for customer testimonials and reviews because this is where you can find an honest feedback on how a certain web hosting company is performing